Cool. It can be a tad overwhelming right at the beginning, not knowing how best to approach things. Don't be afraid to do some reloads while you're learning the game early on. Especially on your first combat mission. Plus, avoid night missions till your squad is better.

It didn't take long for me to get up to speed though. Apparently, Egypt is a great place for the first base since it covers several regions - the initial radar range expands a lot when you upgrade your base so take that into account.

I tend to autoresolve a lot of the air battles. I probably should learn to get good at controlling them manually, but it's only a tiny aspect of the game.

A large section of the game is sort of open-ended, in that you can choose how many of the crash sites to assault or just send an airstrike. But you need to go to a certain amount to get enough materials for the late game goodies.

By the end I had sentinel armour and mag weapons for my main strike team, plus 3 Marauder aircraft in each of my bases. I laid waste to those alien scum.

For some reason I always had a misconception of the game - that it was a bit of an amateur knock-off or something. But it's not, it's genuinely brilliant and really well-balanced.